An Ovechkin Hat Trick

The Washington Capitals welcomed 4 Hershey Bears to the Verizon Center today, called to DC because of a broad array of injuries to the Caps.  Each of the four got to see Alexander Ovechkin do what he does best, score goals.  Notice the ‘s’ at the end.
Ovechkin recorded his 6th career hat trick to lead the Capitals to a 5-3 win over the Atlanta Thrashers. The wrath of Ovechkin started just 3 1/2 minutes into the game on a Washington power play when new call up Sami Lepisto fed a pass to Ovechkin, and Ovie boomed a one timer past Goalie Ondrej Pavelec to give the Capitals a 1-0 lead.    The second goal came on a beautiful three on one breakout by the Caps that started with a Michael Nylander pass to Tomas Fleischmann and Flash sent the puck over to Eric Fehr who caught Pavelec in a bad position to score his second goal of the year and a 2-0 Capitals lead.
Bryan Little narrowed the Caps lead to 2-1 on an Atlanta power play.  Ovechkin would strike again on another power play, this time putting in a rebound from a Victor Kozlov shot to power the Caps to a 3-1 lead at the end of the first period.  Caps out shot the Thrashers 11-4 in the first period.
Just 54 seconds into the second period, Ovechkin would score, netting his 6th career hat trick to lift the Caps to a 4-1 lead.  The goal was assisted by Tom Poti and Tyler Sloan.  Slava Kozlov scored his 12th goal of the year for the Thrashers to cut the lead to 4-2 at the end of the second period.    Caps out shot the Thrashers 12-9 in the second period.
Victor Kozlov scored his 3rd of year, assisted by Ovechkin, just a 1:20 into the third period.  Caps went on to close out the win, 5-3 over division rival Atlanta.  G Jose Theodore stopped 15 of 18 to gain his 6th win of the year.
The Capitals defense was without three starters, Mike Green, Jeff Schultz, and john Erskine, yet they allowed only 18 shots on goal, a testament to the excellent play they got from Lepisto and Karl Alzner.  Alzner, the Caps 2007 first round draft pick, made his NHL debut tonight, leading all Caps defensemen with 21:06 minutes of ice time.  His handling of the puck was pretty damn good.  Alzner has every right to be proud in his debut.  Lepisto played in DC for 7 games last year was also called up from Hershey.  Lepisto played very steady defense, like he did last year and gained an assist on Ovechkin’s first power play goal.
Multi-Point Scorers:
Tomas Fleischmann, 2 assists
Victor Kozlov, 1 goal, 2 assists
Alex Ovechkin, 3 goals, 1 assist
DCPSR Player of the Game:
ALEXANDER OVECHKIN, the Hat Trick and an assist
Next Up:
Friday, NOV 28 at the Verizon Center — Montreal Canadians
NOTABLES
*  Alex Ovechkin has scored 21 points in his last 9 games.  He is now tied for second in the NHL in points. Ovechkin’s 4 point night jumped him over injured Alexander Semin for the team lead in points.
*  Tomas Fleischmann has 4 goals and 3 assists in his last 7 games.
*  The Capitals remain undefeated at the Verizon Center, improving to 8-0-2.
In Hershey
Well, they are now without 4 of their leaders, but the Hershey Bears continue their winning ways, defeating Binghamton 4-1 tonight at the Giant Center.  The Bears featured new call ups from South Carolina to replace Alzner, Lepisto, Bourque, and Mink, who were promoted to Washington.  Coming up from South Carolina were Fs Michael Dubuc and Maxime Lacroix and D Sasha Pokuluk.
The Bears got 2 goals from Oscar Osala, who continues his red hot AHL tear.  Osala scored goals 14 and 15 in tonight’s win, putting him 1 goal behind the AHL lead.  The Bears also got goals from Keith Aucoin and Alexandre Giroux.  Rookies Francois Bouchard and Mathie Perreault each had two assists.  Prospect goalie Simeon Varlamov stopped 23 of 24 shots to improve to 7-2 and lower his GAA to 2.40.
Hershey is in first place and imporved to 15-5-0-1.